Making the Market Work: 3 Ways to Continue to Spread the Word

It’s been a little over a year since the Council of MLS rolled out the 1000watt created “Making the Market Work” branding campaign. Remember the initial energy? Social media channels were buzzing. New videos were proudly created, touting the value and the benefits of the local MLS to consumers (and professionals). Website home pages were blazoned with fresh new images promoting this powerful new messaging. New full-page ads run publicly. There was a genuine esprit de corps in the industry.

But a Google search today reveals the need for a resurgence. I’ve often said that companies often grow tired of their slogans and campaigns long before they reach maximum effectiveness. Making the Market Work has a long life left in it, and it’s time to resurrect our efforts, individually and collectively, and promote this message aggressively.

3 Ways to Spread the Word

The CMLS Marketing and Communications Section Council has recognized this need for some time. A few of us serving on this Council raised our hands to help aid in this effort. I wanted to share a few simple ideas – things all of us can do in the course of our regular workday – to help support this effort.

These are small things that any of us can do. They take just a couple of minutes each to do. If only one in ten professionals in the industry adopted these tactics, these words would be shared potentially literally millions of times every month.

Easy Idea #1: Add a Tagline to Your Email Signature

At the bottom of your email, add a tagline with the “Making the Market Work” phrase. Use one of these variations, or your ownone:

It’s summer vacation time, and a lot of us are going to be setting up our Out-of-Office emails. Instead of the old, dull and uninformative one-sentence email, add a few lines below your core message with a few links to “Making the Market Work” content, and one related to summer vacations.

Here’s an example:

Thanks for your email, but I am officially “off the grid” and with family from August 1 through August 11, 2018. I will not be checking email – completely disconnected; I know, incredible, right? If this is urgent, contact Camilla, and she will help you or find someone who will at 555-555-1212 or camilla@wavgroup.com.

Adding either hashtag – #MakingTheMarketWork or the shorter #MTMW – to every MLS related industry post on your social media channels can make a HUGE difference. But guess what? If you search Twitter, for example, there is a dearth of recent tagged tweets. We need to fix that.

This one is really easy, and it takes seconds, not even minutes, for all of us to fix. The next time you are sharing a post or retweeting something that’s related to one of the themes of the Making the Market Work campaign or the MLS industry or an MLS firm in any way, just add one of these hashtags and we can increase the visibility of this message publicly and significantly, in very rapid measure.

More to come

Our group has more ideas to share, and we welcome yours. We are always looking to promote the “lowest hanging fruit” ideas, things that we can do that are easy to build into our daily routines. Please send me an email, and I’ll share it with our team. After all, the best ideas are borrowed and shared!